


The List

by vulcansmirk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcansmirk/pseuds/vulcansmirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes keeps a list. (set post-"Sign of Three")</p>
            </blockquote>





	The List

**Author's Note:**

> Happy series finale! (Or sad, since everything I write is somehow sad.)

_I solve murders; you save lives._

_You’re so determined to rescue people, even the ones who are beyond saving._

_I was doomed from the start._

~*~

Sherlock Holmes keeps a list. Not on paper, of course—that would be foolish, sentimental. He’s never been much of a man for poetry, and he’s not about to spoil his reputation by leaving stray lines of it haphazardly scrawled across all his casenotes. But there are moments, fleeting moments, when he feels something, like a poison dart to the center of his chest, and in his mind he writes the words, and they go on little slips of parchment and then into a small wooden box, and the box falls closed and the lock clicks into place and he slides the box into a dusty corner in his mind and gives it a whole shadow-filled wing to haunt, near nothing else of importance. Sometimes, he almost forgets it’s even there.

~*~

“You left early.”

Sherlock sits at his desk, records strewn in front of him. Business has been slow this week, so he’s decided to reconfigure all his case files, organizing them chronologically rather than by client name.

John starts again. “Sherlock, you left my wedding early.”

The detective flicks his eyes up and away from his work. John looks down at him, face tanned, eyes shining, brows slightly raised, and with a tiny quirk to his lips. Expectant, but sated, happy. Not angry. Distracted, if anything.

_I feel safe when you walk in step with me._

_I feel better with you running at my side, your hand in mine, chained to me even after I’ve removed the handcuffs._

John blinks his eyes twice in quick succession. “Well? Have you got anything to say?”

One of Sherlock’s eyebrows rises in what is meant to be nonchalance with an edge of condescension. “Say? About what? What is there to say?”

Brows lowered, mouth tight. “Sherlock,” John sighs, and it seems Sherlock’s evasion has only piqued his interest. He’s turned so he’s no longer facing Sherlock at an angle, but straight on, and he’s planted his hand on the table as though to root himself to the spot. Internally, Sherlock curses, but what else could he have said? He has no alibi.

After a beat, John continues. “Sherlock, why did you leave?”

Breaking eye contact, Sherlock looks back down at the papers in front of him, flicking through them with deft fingers. “There was no point in my staying. My duties as best man were all taken care of. My role fulfilled.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock watches as John curls his hand into a loose fist, pressing his knuckles to the table and putting all his weight on them.

“You could have stayed to say goodbye,” he says, quietly.

_After everything I’ve said to you, and everything I’ve done, when I say I need to do something you still ask if you can help._

_I am ridiculous._

_Why are you still here?_

“It’s not as though we weren’t going to see each other again,” says Sherlock indignantly. “Look, see? Here you are right now, back safe and sound from your sex holiday. Honeymoon,” he corrects quickly, reading the razor’s edge in Watson’s momentarily tightened fist.

“Sherlock,” John insists.

He makes no reply.

“Sherlock, look at me.”

A pause. He sets his papers down, slowly, calmly. Looks up at John and meets his eye.

_You believed in something more than just my words._

_You believed in me._

The put-upon tightness in John’s lips slackens, his eyes opening up into something more fluid than aggravation.

_I need you here—my dauntless military man._

“Are you alright?” asks John. Sherlock just looks up at him blankly.

“Yes, of course, John. I’m fine,” he answers, but his voice is too flat and he knows it.

John knows it, too. “Sherlock,” he says again, and the detective closes his eyes against the sound of his own name.

_~~I was so alone, and I owe you so much.~~ _

_Alone is what I have. Alone protects ~~you~~ me._

In between bells and flower petals and swirls of white, cake and champagne and the absolute horror of speech-making; in between dancing and attempted murder and describing to a room full of people just how brilliant was his friend—his only friend, his best friend—Sherlock had made a discovery. Shortly after they’d met, John Watson had had the audacity to call the great Sherlock Holmes ignorant. He had been right. Indeed, he had been more right even than he must have realized, for he couldn’t have noticed the gaping hole in Sherlock’s data. The man who prided himself on his ability to read people had, for all this time, neglected to read himself.

John kneels by Sherlock’s side, his hand falling easily atop Sherlock’s in what the detective knows must be meant as a gesture of comfort. John cannot know how it makes his heart lurch.

_If you could have felt my pulse when you took it, you would have found it racing._

“Talk to me,” John says, and the softness in his eyes feels to Sherlock like a lobotomy.

_Or maybe my heartbeat was every bit as nonexistent as it seemed._

_I must be truly dead inside to have let you endure that pain._

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, and this time he forces his voice to stay flat because the alternative would be worse.

John smiles a little—pityingly, Sherlock thinks. “It’s okay,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. You were there. You gave a bloody speech. You were more supportive through the whole process than I ever thought possible for you, and I shouldn’t be getting on your case for something so stupid. I should be thanking you.”

God, why is he forgiving him? He needs to stop forgiving him.

Sherlock shakes his head. “No.” No, it’s not that. Not just that.

_I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m not sure you’ll ever know how much._

“Sherlock, it’s fine,” John repeats, leaning in closer, tightening his fingers about Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock makes the mistake of looking directly at John’s face, and immediately he takes in: shirt clean but rumpled, slight belly forming, laughter lines alongside his eyes and mouth, smudge of lipstick on his cheek that looks as though John tried to wipe it away but didn’t put enough effort into the attempt. All of it like a blinking neon sign above John’s head, proclaiming one simple thing.

He’s gone.

_What you call a miracle, I call a curse._

_She was the best thing that could have happened to you after me._

John thinks the worst Sherlock could have done to him was let him think his friend was dead. But Sherlock knows there’s something worse. Much worse.

With an unfamiliar hollow ache in his chest, Sherlock allows the intensity to leave his back muscles, his spine to relax from its rigid state. He looks not quite into John’s eyes, and he feels the dejection like diluted battery acid in his own. (He thinks that might be the nascent sting of tears, and he hates himself for it.) He slides his free hand, gently, tremulously, over John’s, and fancies that by sandwiching John’s hand in his own he might trap his friend here for good.

“Thank you, John,” says Sherlock quietly. “I’m sorry my countenance cannot betray my true feelings at the moment”—on the contrary, Sherlock thinks, it betrays a little too much—“but I promise you I am very glad you’re here.”

_I’ve missed you. I’m still missing you._

He meets John’s concerned eye and smiles a tiny, sad smile.

“I’ll be fine,” he assures his friend. He’s not sure he believes it.

John continues to penetrate Sherlock with his gaze, concern knotting in his forehead. But Sherlock detects something like knowing in the back of John’s eyes as the other says simply, “Alright. If you say so,” and reclaims his hand.

Reclaims it. Sherlock isn’t sure he ever had it in the first place.

_Walking in step with a man such as you, knowing how important I am to you—it would be more than enough for any man. It should be enough for me._

_It isn’t._


End file.
